Though we’ve been taught that more-expensive craft beer is better than cheap macro brews, there’s a lot more to how beer price impacts our enjoyment than we think. Here’s a look at how beer price influences our perception of the beverage. The Role Beer Price Plays The price of beer has a very real impact […]

Though we’ve been taught that more-expensive craft beer is better than cheap macro brews, there’s a lot more to how beer price impacts our enjoyment than we think. Here’s a look at how beer price influences our perception of the beverage.

The Role Beer Price Plays

The price of beer has a very real impact on our enjoyment of it. In a blind tasting, we may not know the difference, but when we’re aware of the price, we find higher-priced beers more enjoyable. Think you’re not affected by price? Think again. Science says otherwise.

Not only did higher prices make people think the liquid was better, but when they were tasted, the areas of the brain connected to pleasure lit up brighter. We don’t just think higher priced items taste better, they actually do taste better to us, simply by attaching a higher price tag.

This is why blind tasting often have unexpected winners, as less-expensive beers are rarely seen as being equal to the more expensive, when we’re aware of the price. In numerous blind tastings I’ve been part of, we’ve found that every-day reasonably priced beers frequently outrank those many consider the best in the world.

Enjoying A Better Beer Experience

So how can we use this knowledge to better enjoy our beer?

One option is to have someone else buy our beer without telling us the actual price of each bottle. Maybe set a monthly beer allowance and have your significant other or friend buy for you. Without a price reference, we’ll be able to enjoy the beer for what it is, without allowing our judgement of quality based on price tag come into play.

The far easier option is to compare beers to others at the same price level. Knowing we psychologically believe that a $50 beer is superior to a $10 one, even if both bottles contain the same liquid, it’s silly to compare the two.

It shows a clear issue with beer rating systems as lower-priced beers will never bring about the higher mental pleasure that higher buck brews do, and thus will never rate as high.

Limited availability also plays a huge role in enjoyment, just as price does. Take a look at any top list and you’ll find most see very limited distribution.

The best option is to simply be aware of how price impacts our enjoyment. Be cognizant of the fact a higher price tag may make you enjoy a beer more, even if the liquid itself isn’t that great.

Also remember that a low price tag doesn’t mean low quality. Be aware of thinking that a cheap beer can’t be good. There are plenty of awesome budget beers out there if we’re willing to forgo first making price perceptions.

Better Beer For Your Buck

Understanding how beer price impacts our enjoyment of the beverage can help prevent us from spending a lot more on beer that isn’t likely any better than the lesser-priced.

In the end all beers are created from the same four basic ingredients. It’s silly to think that ones costing $300 a bottle could really taste 3000% better than a $10 bottle, but that seems to be what’s happening as prices for many prized brews keep climbing.

Remember how price impacts pleasure when deciding on your next drink. It could help you pick a wonderfully enjoyable beer, without totally draining the monthly beer fund.

Each year Darkness descends from Surly Brewing with an epic day of beer badassery, music, and much more. The Darkness Day 2019 details just dropped. Here’s why you’ve got to attend. Darkness Day 2019 After years at their original Brooklyn Center brewery, Surly moved Darkness Day to Somerset, WI last year, which is where it […]

Each year Darkness descends from Surly Brewing with an epic day of beer badassery, music, and much more. The Darkness Day 2019 details just dropped. Here’s why you’ve got to attend.

Darkness Day 2019

After years at their original Brooklyn Center brewery, Surly moved Darkness Day to Somerset, WI last year, which is where it will return again for 2019. Saturday, September 28th is the official event, but they’re kicking things off with all kinds of madness on Friday the 27th too.

This year the original label are is from Tim Chapman and features a six-limbed fiend destroying the brewery in search of beer.

Dawn Of Darkness

Surly will unleash this epic weekend experience with Dawn Of Darkness, a beer fest that’ll include 20 guest breweries, along with their own offerings. This will be a great way to begin the weekend, with a beer fest on Friday night.

Sample all you like from awesome brewers including:

Bottle Logic (Anaheim, CA)

Brickstone Brewing (Bourbonnais, IL)

Casey Brewing and Blending (Glenwood Springs, CO)

Champion Brewing Co. (Charlottesville, VA)

Culmination Brewing (Portland, OR)

Ecliptic Brewing (Portland, OR)

Great Notion Brewing (Portland, OR)

Hailstorm Brewing Co. (Tinley Park, IL)

J Wakefield Brewing (Miami, FL)

Mikerphone Brewing (Elk Grove Village, IL)

Other Half Brewing (Brooklyn, NY)

Phase Three Brewing (Chicago, IL)

Sun King Brewing (Indianapolis, IN)

Superstition Meadery (Prescott, AZ)

Taxman Brewing Co. (Bargersville, IN)

The Rare Barrel (Berkeley, CA)

Three Weavers Brewing (Inglewood, CA)

TRVE Brewing Co. (Denver, CO)

Wren House Brewing Co. (Phoenix, AZ)

DJ Lori Barbero (of Babes In Toyland) will be spinning music Friday, while you enjoy the beer festivities and bottle sharing.

Rock all night long or try to get a bit of sleep at the camp grounds for the craziness on Saturday.

Darkness Day

Try not to tie one on too hard Friday because you’ve got a big day on Saturday. Cook up a hearty breakfast around the campfire, shower off the shame in the nearby bathroom facilities, and be ready when things get going at 11am.

Grab bottles of Darkness 2019 (up to 6 per person) and pickup your Darkness variants. They’ll also have an assortment of rare and exclusive bottles to buy.

Timed tappings, crazy casks, Darkness variants, and much more beer action will be rocking throughout the day. Lots of awesome options will make for no shortness of drink. Food trucks to fill your fix too.

Music Madness

Long known for the metal, Darkness Day 2019 mixes things up a bit with metal and more.

God Came From Space

The Blind Shake

The Black Lips

Eyehategod

Look for additional acts to be added too.

2019 Darkness Variants

Last year Surly introduced three Darkness variants and this year they’ve done so again. Available exclusively with the variant ticket package, 2019 brings this killer new combos:

Staying & Shuttling

All of the ticket packages include a reserved campground spot and parking. Without a doubt, staying the night is the best way to experience Darkness Day. No worries about driving or missing any of the action.

For those who’s parents won’t let them sleep over, Surly will have a shuttle available to and from the event both Friday and throughout the day on Saturday. Grab a pass so you can still enjoy some fun.

Welcome The Darkness

Darkness Day is an amazing weekend filled with beer, music, and madness. 2019 continues to add to the awesome event with subtle changes to make it even better all around.

We love the smell and flavor of hops. Now you can enjoy them even when you’re not drinking beer, with H2OPS Sparkling Hop Water. H2OPS Beer is awesome but it’s not always the best thing for our bodies and there are certainly times when we can’t be putting back a brew (like when we’re driving […]

We love the smell and flavor of hops. Now you can enjoy them even when you’re not drinking beer, with H2OPS Sparkling Hop Water.

H2OPS

Beer is awesome but it’s not always the best thing for our bodies and there are certainly times when we can’t be putting back a brew (like when we’re driving or during the workday). Sparkling water is the perfect non-beer beverage and H2OPS Sparkling Hop Water takes it to the next level.

H2OPS is clean and crisp sparkling water, with a hop hit. Hops from the Pacific Northwest impart a hint of hop aroma and wonderful flavor. It’s even dry-hopped for an extra hop hit.

Notes of citrus fruitiness bubble across the tongue. Subtle grapefruit, lemon, light pine, and a touch of earthiness. It’s a tasty and refreshing drink.

While we love beer, some of the big ones can pack a ton of carbs and calories. Certainly not always the best for our bodies. H2OPS contains no calories, carbs, or alcohol, so you can enjoy it anytime, without guilt (or hangover).

Big Ass Beer Soap

This soap bar takes Fresh Squeezed IPA and blends it with other wonderful aromas. Hoppy beer and neroli blend together nicely and create a fresh citrusy hit that’s sure to stimulate the senses. Other notes of light oakmoss and sandalwood help insure a clean and fresh smell.

Each batch of Duke Cannon soap is made by hand, using plant-based ingredients. The bars weigh in at a hefty 10oz, so you’ll have no problem holding on to it, unlike you do with little bars. They’ll last longer and make lathering up easier too.

You Clean Up Nice

We love anything that integrates our brews into the mix. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to freshen up in the morning, or wash off the grime from a long day, Big Ass Beer Soap is the way to do it.

Most have heard stories of how beer came to be and know some of the history, but few have gone this deep into the details. A Natural History Of Beer takes an intimate look at that beverage we all love. The Natural History Of Beer In Detail There are tons of books on the topic […]

Most have heard stories of how beer came to be and know some of the history, but few have gone this deep into the details. A Natural History Of Beer takes an intimate look at that beverage we all love.

The Natural History Of Beer In Detail

There are tons of books on the topic of beer and how it came to be. They mostly tell the same story, with some a bit more detailed than others and a little differentiation between histories. A Natural History Of Beer dispenses with the stories we’ve all heard and gets into a level not normally seen in beer books.

The authors here come from a scientific background, and it shows. A Natural History Of Beer looks at beer element by element. They start higher-level and then really get into the science of things.

It starts with history, people, and beer. Innovation, industry, and more. Various cultures and their relationship with beer are explored. Not the simple stories you hear on a brewery tour, but much more detailed looks at various groups throughout history and the role beer played.

Then it’s on to science. Things start heavy and stay that way. Exploration of molecules and factors involved in brewing are followed by chapters devoted to water, barley, yeast, and hops. We get into scientific formulas and things not covered even in advanced homebrew books. It’s certainly more than most expect to find in a beer book.

Part three gets into our relationship with beer. We’re talking a detailed look at the mechanisms that allow us to smell and taste it, along with the effects it has on our body. Science is the focus here again, and chemical interactions with the brain, blood, tongue, stomach, and more are examined closely.

It ends with the phylogeny of beer, recreation of historical brews, and what the future may hold.

History In Detail

A Natural History Of Beer is an interesting read, but be warned that it’s more than the typical beer lover may be looking for. The science involved may be better suited to a more advanced home brewer, though it may be more than they’re looking for too. If you want to learn the basic history of your favorite beverage, I’d look elsewhere first. If you want to really get into what beer is made of, how it interacts with our bodies and our world, this is a great read.

You wait and wait and finally the time comes and goes too quickly. Limited release beers are lovely but often gone too soon. Wouldn’t you love that brew to be available all the time? Here’s why you may not want your favorite limited release/seasonal beer to become year-round. Leave Limited Limited Though the life of […]

You wait and wait and finally the time comes and goes too quickly. Limited release beers are lovely but often gone too soon. Wouldn’t you love that brew to be available all the time? Here’s why you may not want your favorite limited release/seasonal beer to become year-round.

Leave Limited Limited

Though the life of limited release beers is often far too brief, there are lots of positive thing about those that come into our lives but leave too fast.

The craft beer world has become very focused on the next new thing. The newest releases of the month, the newest breweries in town, the newest popular styles. When a beer is a limited release, or even seasonal, it still retains that newness craft beer fan fawn over. This has a number of positive effects on the beer and drinker.

First, that newness and limited availability help move product. You know you’re getting fresh beer because it’s only been out for a short time and limited/seasonal releases tend to sit on the shelves for far shorter periods of time than year-round brews do.

Items that are limited (including seasonals) also have a positive phycological impact on our overall enjoyment. Studies have shown that we not only value things that are limited more than the less-rare, but the enjoyment center of our brains light up brighter when we consume them. This means we may actually gain more pleasure from drinking a seasonal beer than a year-round one. The simple act of making a limited-release beer year-round may be enough to cause us to feel less enjoyment from it, even when nothing else about that beer has been changed, besides the release schedule.

Disadvantages Of Being Year-Round

As much as there are advantages to remaining limited or seasonal, there are disadvantages to going year-round too. They could sadly lead to you falling out of love with a favorite.

While limited availability beers tend to sell quickly, year-round often sit on the shelves for longer periods of time. People know they can get them anything they like, so they go for the limited stuff they may miss out on instead.

This leads to product sitting on the shelf for longer. While a good liquor store and distributor should take care of anything past date-code, that doesn’t mean the beer is as fresh as can be. With styles that are better as fresh as possible (IPAs for example), even the difference between a week and a month can be noticeable. With year-round product sitting longer, you may find you enjoy the brew less than you did before it became more available.

We’ve all done it. We see that awesome year-round beer on the shelf (maybe it’s an old favorite or the one that turned you on the craft in the first place) but then find ourselves buying the brew of the moment instead. “I’ll buy this one because I can only get it for a limited time, while those others I can get any time.”, you justify to yourself. The problem is there’s always a new limited release, and you never/rarely return to those year-round offerings. You’ve just gone from buying a beer in as large of quantities as possible when it’s a limited release, to rarely (if ever) buying it when it becomes easily available.

Remaining Limited

It’s sad that seasonal and limited release beers are only around for a short time but there are downsides to becoming year-round that may be worse than limited availability.

Part of the magic of these beers is their limited availability. We shouldn’t be crying about it, but rather celebrating it.

Enjoy the limited/seasonal releases while you can and don’t always wish you had more. Being year-round may not be awesome as you think. And when you run out, be sure to grab one of the many amazing year-round brews you haven’t had in a while. The next limited-release will be out soon enough.

Want a tasty snack for your next beer tasting or any time? Check out Squirrel Stash Nuts, including their Buzzed Craft Beer Roasted Cashews. Craft Beer Roasted Cashews When you need a snack to go with your beer, some roasted nuts are the perfect option. They’re packed full of protein, healthy fat, and they taste […]

Craft Beer Roasted Cashews

When you need a snack to go with your beer, some roasted nuts are the perfect option. They’re packed full of protein, healthy fat, and they taste great. And they’re even better in the various varieties Squirrel Stash Nuts has to offer, roasted with craft beer.

Buzzed Craft Beer Roasted Cashews are made by blending Squirrel Stash maple cinnamon glaze with craft beer to create a sweet and tasty treat. The beer imparts a unique flavor and the brews they use change frequently, so there’s always something new to try. I had both the Sam Adams Holiday Porter and Merry Maker roasted cashews and there’s a subtle difference, with porter imparting a light chocolatey sweetness to the Merry Maker’s lighter caramel tone.

In addition to craft beer roasted cashews, Squirrel Stash offers a number of other fun flavor options. These include Turmeric Chai, Sweet Heat, along with almonds, pumpkin seeds, and more.

Squirrel Stash nuts are packed in compostable bags, so you can enjoy your snack without guilt. Please throw the wrapper in the proper place.

Just Nuts

Nuts are a great addition to munch on at your next beer tasting or any time you get hungry. Squirrel Stash Nuts took our favorite beverage and created a unique snack using it.

Shirts On Tap

Who doesn’t want an awesome new brewery shirt in the mail each month? Shirts On Tap delivers that and more.

Subscribers can pick from 6 different cities to receive brewery shirts from (more cities are on the way) or receive a shirt from a random city each month. You can pick from a number of styles for both women and men (heavy or soft cotton t-shirts, tank tops, v-necks, and more). In addition, you also choose if they want the logo on the font or the back of the shirt.

In addition to a brewery shirt, each shipment comes with a bit of information about the brewery of the month, so you can learn more about who’s gear you’re rocking. That way, even if you haven’t been to the brewery, you won’t look like a total poser if people ask about it.

But truthfully, no one will judge you for wearing a shirt to a brewery you haven’t been to. A Goose Island employee asked about my Empirical Brewery shirt when we ran into each other at a local bar on Thanksgiving night. When I said I hadn’t been, he told me how awesome they were, then bought me a beer while we chatted.

Your Shirts On Tap shipment also includes coupons to the brewery, good for free pints, free flights, discounted food, merchandise, and more. Now you’ve got a sweet shirt and an awesome reason to go check out the brewer featured on it. They also throw in stickers.

Great Gear

Growing your beer gear is easier than ever with a subscription to Shirts On Tap. It’s a great way to get new shirts, learn about new breweries, and grab great discounts.

The 686 Men’s Sixer Beer Jacket

This thing has all kinds of beer pockets! 10 in total. That means you can carry a full 12-pack of 12oz or tallboys (you carry one in each hand too, right?).

The three front and one inner pocket are insulated, keeping you warm and your beers cold. With beer pockets inside and out, there’s somewhere to stash beer everywhere you look.

In addition to places to put a brew, the 686 Men’s Sixer Jacket also has lots of awesome features for any outdoor enthusiast. It’s waterproof but also breathable, warm but not heavyweight. Get too warm? There are Air-Flo mesh lined underarm vents you can open to help cool down.

The thumb-hole lycra wrist gaiters keep your hands warm when not rocking gloves and make gripping a beer easier. Along with the adjustable cuff, they make keeping sleeves in place simple.

Inside, there’s a pocket for your smartphone that allows you to operate it through the clear plastic. It’s accessible from both inside the coat and out, so getting at your device is easy.

Earphone loops in the collar keep your earbuds within easy reach, and prevent them from getting tangled.

This jacket has everything you need to attack the winter, packing all you need along for the ride.

Ready For Winter Fun

Winter weather is here and it’s time to keep the party going outside. With the 686 Men’s SIxer Beer Jacket, you can be ready to play outside and have plenty of beers too. Pack some brew and head out for some fun.

A good Boy Scout is always prepared and so is a good beer drinker. Bottle opener always at the ready, it never hurts to be prepared for more than just brews. The HexFlex Multi-Tool is a beer bottle opener and more. HexFlex Multi-Tool Bottle openers don’t have to be a single function gadget. The HexFlex […]

HexFlex Multi-Tool

Bottle openers don’t have to be a single function gadget. The HexFlex Multi-Tool packs a bottle opener and tons of other functionality into a tiny package.

Original designed as a snowboard tool, this little device isn’t just for on the slopes. The HexFlex is 15 tools in one. Arranged in a snowflake-design, it’s full of utility:

#2 Philips Screwdriver

#3 Philips Screwdriver

Flathead Screwdriver & Boxcutter

6mm Hex

5mm Hex

4mm Hex

10mm

7/16

5/16

1/4

12mm

1/2

9/16

Bottle Opener

Even with all that functionality, it weighs only 2.3 ounces and is just over 2″ in diameter, making it small enough to put on your keychain or coat. It’s great to carry a bottle opener but even better to carry a tool that can meet all kinds of additional needs.

The HexFlex is available in standard or metric sizes and a variety of finishes, metals, colors, and anodized styles. No matter your needs, they’ve got one to fit them.

Tiny Tool, Big Utility

For those looking for a tiny tool to assist in all types of situations (including opening your beer bottle, of course), the HexFlex Multi-Tool is a great gadget to carry. It packs a ton of utility into a small tool and comes in handy all the time.